During a previous harvest she had to be taken to hospital after she was hit over the head with an iron bar by an Israeli security guard from one of the nearby settlements. On another occasion settlers threw stones and human excreta at her and other volunteers, while shooting into the air. (full article…)

“We Jewish and Arab teens from throughout Israel hereby announce that we object to Israel’s oppressive policy in the occupied territories and within the state of Israel, and therefore we will refuse to take part in these activities, which are carried out in our name by the Israel Defense Army,” says the letter, signed by 80 students. (full article…)

In Gaza, posters appeared on walls on Wednesday calling Mr. Abbas a traitor and saying he should be consigned to “the trash heap of history.” Gaza is controlled by Hamas, the militant Islamic group that is the Palestinian Authority’s main rival. (full article…)

…then they would mention that resentment of the Mahmoud Abbas and the Zionist Collaboration Regime is not confined to Hamas, but most sectors of Palestinian society. Reading this in the Times, you would imagine the poster is simply political posturing by Hamas (which certainly exists), but faced with a regime that runs the Israeli occupation by proxy and crumbles to US/Zionist demands almost without exception, Palestinians of all stripes oppose this clown. Imagine that Richard Goldstone cares more about pursuing justice in Gaza than the lousy regime in Ramallah!

Israeli youth who refuse to cooperate with Israel’s military occupation are sent into a lengthy and relentless labyrinth of court martials and consecutive jail terms in what Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard, representing Shministim, calls a “price tag” meant to deter other young Israelis from non-participation. “Otherwise,” he says, “[the Israeli government's] argument says, everyone — of ideological or personal reasons — will refuse to serve.” (full article…)

Commander Aharon Franco slams Arab protestors, calls them ‘ungrateful’ for rioting during High Holidays after allowing to attend Ramadan prayers; says steps will be taken against Sheikh Raed Salah who is believed to have instigated recent rioting (full article…)

He’s right. They should grateful for any crumb Israel tosses to them. In fact, they should be happy Israel hasn’t slaughtered them en masse as in Gaza.

A new report from Adalah shows how the courts and police attempted to stamp out opposition to Operation Cast Lead. “This is a time of war, and every incident harms the people’s morale.”

This was not a sentence in a right-wing journal, but rather a statement by an Israel Police representative during Operation Cast Lead seeking to persuade the Tel Aviv District Court to block anti-war protesters from the city. (full article…)

The real question is why the image of an Israeli soldier, agonizing and crying, is so appealing to festival curators and audiences of the western world? When we find the answer to this question, we will be able to comprehend the unreasonable, international sympathy that the state of Israel is awarded, regardless of its actions, which are perceived by the same West itself as violent. (full article…)

A new organization of several Israeli and Jewish student groups is working to help young people who are thousands of kilometers away — in Iran. Ahead of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s upcoming address at the United Nations General Assembly, Israelis have increased their PR activity in favor of Iranians being oppressed by their regime. (full article…)

I am not a hero. But I have a point of view. I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated; and to see my Baghdad burned, my people killed. Thousands of tragic pictures remained in my head, pushing me towards the path of confrontation. The scandal of Abu Ghraib. The massacre of Falluja, Najaf, Haditha, Sadr City, Basra, Diyala, Mosul, Tal Afar, and every inch of our wounded land. I travelled through my burning land and saw with my own eyes the pain of the victims, and heard with my own ears the screams of the orphans and the bereaved. And a feeling of shame haunted me like an ugly name because I was powerless.

As soon as I finished my professional duties in reporting the daily tragedies, while I washed away the remains of the debris of the ruined Iraqi houses, or the blood that stained my clothes, I would clench my teeth and make a pledge to our victims, a pledge of vengeance.

The opportunity came, and I took it. (full article…)

More than 80 refugees were killed in a government raid against a camp in north Yemen where Shi’ite rebels are challenging President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a camp source and news reports said on Thursday. (full article…)

Khatib claims a soldier then hit him from behind with the butt of his rifle. “Then the nightmare began,” he said. “All of the soldiers in the apartment began to beat me with everything possible – hands, rifles, feet. They kicked me in the head, the face, the stomach.” (full article…)

The Iraqi television journalist who hurled his shoes at then-President George W. Bush was released Tuesday after nine months in prison, claiming Iraqi authorities had tortured him. (more…)

A decision by the University of Wyoming to name a new center for international students for former Vice President Dick Cheney is drawing criticism from people who say Cheney’s support for the Iraq war and harsh interrogation techniques should disqualify him from the distinction.

The former vice president and wife Lynne are expected to attend Thursday’s dedication of the new Cheney International Center on the Laramie campus. (more…)

Zaidi’s actions during the former US president’s swansong visit to Iraq last December have not stopped reverberating in the nine months since. Next Monday, when the journalist walks out of prison, his 10 raging seconds, which came to define his country’s last six miserable years, are set to take on a new life even more dramatic than the opening act. (more…)

Palestinian factions staged protests in refugee camps all across the country on Friday to condemn the ongoing delay in reconstructing the battered northern refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared. Demonstrations were held in Ain al-Hilweh, near the southern coastal city of Sidon, al-Buss, near the port city of Tyre, and Chatila on the outskirts of the capital, to express solidarity with the refugees of Nahr al-Bared, who have yet to return home two years after the end of the battles between the Lebanese Army and the Al-Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam militant group. (more…)

Three years after being shot by a Border Guard officer during an anti-security fence rally in the West Bank village of Bil’in, Limor Goldstein was awarded damages in the amount of NIS 3.25 million (about $860,000). (more…)

Jordanian police Sunday arrested 11 people, including trade union leaders, to break up a demonstration against fruit and vegetable imports from Israel, protest organizers said. (more…)

Nineteen foreign activists of the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement were being held in Israel awaiting deportation on Thursday, two days after the Israeli Navy seized control of their boat off Gaza. (more…)

Unwavering support for Israeli policy has eroded dramatically both on American college campuses and within the United States as a whole, according to a group of American university professors who on Sunday concluded an academic exchange program here, sponsored by the Yitzhak Rabin Center. (more…)

These reasons explain why over recent weeks while the Iran elections were happening there has been virtually no coverage in most media of demonstrations numbering in the tens of thousands in Georgia or Peru. It has even been reported in Peru that dozens of persons have been killed during the protests, or “clashes” as they’ve also been labeled (since more than a dozen police have also been killed), more than the reported number killed in Iran. (more…)

A Palestinian protestor was killed and another sustained wounds after being shot by Border Guard forces during an anti-security fence protest in Naalin, Palestinian sources said. (more…)

The legendary rocker and co-founder of Pink Floyd says he would give a concert in a flash if Israel’s West Bank wall is torn down. Roger Waters made the promise Tuesday during a visit to a Palestinian refugee camp that is hemmed in by the separation barrier’s tall slabs of cement. The 65-year-old co-wrote Pink Floyd’s iconic “The Wall” album and performed music from it in 1990 at the site where the Berlin Wall once stood. Waters had harsh words for the West Bank barrier, which Israel says was built as a defense against Palestinian militants. The musician says the wall amounts to an oppressive grab of Palestinian land and that he hopes that “this thing, this awful thing, is destroyed soon.” (more…)

Motorola, Caterpillar, Veolia, the Tesco supermarket chain, and other companies across the world that do business with Israel are suffering losses due to a global boycott in support of Palestinian rights. (more…)

Okinawa is currently home to approximately 25,000 U.S. service members and their dependents. These soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen are a key component of the United States’ and Japan’s defense strategy. We greatly appreciate the generosity of the people of Okinawa and their role as host to U.S. forces in Japan. (more…)

What he fails to mention is the massive local opposition to the presence 25,000 American soldiers on Okinawa — an island with a population of 1.2 million people — which gained huge momentum after the rape of a 12-year-old girl by three U.S. servicemen in the mid-1990s.

Video has emerged showing two protesters confronting former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the White House Correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night. As Rumsfeld entered the building, Desiree Fairooz and Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK were there to greet him.

Desiree Fairooz: “War criminal! War criminal! War criminal! Arrest this man! Arrest the war criminal! I wish I had some handcuffs right now to arrest this man! He is responsible for the death of millions of people! (more…)

“Israel destroyed our home, exiled our people, built settlements, ruined the Muslim holy sites, and slaughtered women, children and senior citizens in Gaza,” he continued. (more…)

Those present in the hall attempted to silence him, but he continued, slamming Israel for “destroying Palestinian cities and erecting settlements on Palestinian land. Jerusalem will remain the Palestinian people’s capital,” he said in Arabic, and called on the heads of the other religions present to “defend the Palestinians and their lands.” (more…)

Dozens of Palestinian and foreign activists sporting protective face masks demonstrated on Friday against the “occupation flu” from Israel they said was worse than swine flu. (more…)

University students have rallied in the Afghan capital, Kabul, angered by the deaths of more than 125 villagers in a US air raid. (more…)

His “crime” was trying to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the homes of Palestinian Bedouins from Um El Hir in the South Hebron region. These Palestinians have been under Israeli occupation for almost 42 years; they still live without electricity, running water and other basic services and are continuously harassed by Jewish settlers and the military – two groups that have united to expropriate Palestinian land and that clearly have received the government’s blessing to do so. (more…)

The crowd approached the barrier, still singing. One man flew a paper kite shaped as a plane. “This land is a closed military zone,” an Israeli soldier shouted in flawless Arabic over a loudspeaker. “You are not allowed near the wall.” Then the soldiers fired a barrage of teargas.

It has been like this every Friday in the village of Bil’in for more than four years – the most persistent popular demonstration against Israel’s vast steel and concrete barrier. It is a protest founded on non-violence that is spreading to other West Bank villages. But it has become increasingly dangerous. (more…)

Police detain suspects, one of them a 70-year-old woman, seize computers used to upload material to website encouraging draft-dodging (more…)

A Palestinian was moderately-to-seriously injured Friday after an IDF tear gas canister hit him in the face during the weekly rally against the separation fence in the village of Na’alin near Ramallah, witnesses at the place said. (more…)

Repressive actions are being carried out by de facto government forces in the Gaza Strip against Fatah Youth members preparing to mark Prisoners Day in Rafah, head of the youth council in the Gaza Strip Mahmoud Qanan said Thursday. (more…)

We scholars, inspired by the wishes of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace. (more…)

The Israeli police were following the orders of Israel’s Public Security Minister Avi Dichter to use whatever force was necessary to prevent the Palestinian Authority (PA) from celebrating “Jerusalem as the capital of Arabic culture for 2009.”

The tough crackdown, on what on the surface appeared to be a harmless and fun cultural event, underlines the growing conflict between the Israel government and the PA over the division of the city between Israeli West Jerusalem and Palestinian East Jerusalem. (more…)

“The goal of the march is to make it clear to a group of unrulies in the Arab sector who is the owner of State of Israel,” said Itamar Ben Gvir, a former Kach Party activist and one of the organizers of the demonstration. (more…)

Ben Gvir, an aid to radical MK Baruch Marzel, is the same nutcase that heckled us in Hebron recently and who shouted at Barack Obama when he toured Israel during the election campaign.

The demonstrators said pressure should be put on Hamas to release Shalit by worsening the conditions of the almost 11,000 Palestinians being held in Israeli jails. (more…)

Just imagine if these people put all this effort towards demanding an end to the occupation.

“It is unbelievable that, all over the world, people were supporting Gaza,” Yazid Khader, a spokesman for the movement, said last week. “Yet here on the West Bank people were unable to do so. We ask: will the blood spilled in Gaza be enough for the Palestinian Authority to move towards reconciliation with us?” (more…)

According to Israeli police reports, at least 763 Israeli citizens, the majority of them Palestinian and 244 under 18 years old, have been arrested, imprisoned or detained for participating in such demonstrations. Most have been held and then released, but at least 30 of those arrested over the past three weeks are still being held in prison. (more…)

So far, only one reservist has been jailed for refusing to fight. (more…)

A Palestinian has been shot dead and several others wounded after Israeli security forces opened fire during a protest in the West Bank against Israel’s war in Gaza. (more…)

I write as an Israeli. Some of us, as Israelis, are grieving over what we have become. Blaming the other side with a roster of rehearsed clichés cannot mitigate the grief. (more…)

Just look at this lousy article in the Nation. The author is seriously trying to draw our sympathy for the “Israelis (and Jews) who know the unconventional facts”, who are “marginalized” and “ignored by the mainstream media”.

I can’t stand these introspective articles about the “marginalized” Israeli peace movement. The Israeli peace movement died long ago—it has not been marginalized, it is simply not relevant. When 90% of the Israelis are lining up behind this current massacre, spare me the self-pity.

Fatah is keeping a lid on protests, not letting West Bankers draw it into Israel’s war on Hamas. Senior voices in the secular party that runs the Palestinian Authority (PA) see restraint as key to its quest for statehood. Getting entangled in Gaza, they say, would only embolden Hamas. (more…)

Meanwhile, Israeli police admitted they arrested about 600 people involved in protests against the Gaza offensive, some of them for stone-throwing. Adalah lawyers said more than 200 people, most of them Arab, were still in jail.

“We’re talking about mass arrests,” said Abeer Baker, adding that Israel was exploiting a 30-day window before an indictment had to be filed to hold suspects without producing evidence. (more…)

International opprobrium is shrugged off, but it is not merely a case of not caring what the world thinks: the zero-tolerance for any questioning about the extent and nature of the war is directed also inward. Israel is a nation seemingly hell-bent not just on deterring its enemies but on deterring all troubling debate, a self-willed therapy to abate the doubts that erupted during the War in Lebanon against Hizbullah two years ago. (more…)

Ramallah residents were shocked on Friday when a protest against the Israeli offensive in Gaza was forcibly dispersed by Palestinian Authority security forces using tear gas and clubs. Youth from the Fatah movement assisted security forces in breaking up a rally of solidarity with the Palestinian faction’s rival Hamas in the Gaza Strip. (more…)

Pro-Zionist demonstrators in San Francisco…

Another peace rally Saturday night brought together about a couple of thousand Israelis to demand an immediate end to the ongoing assault in Gaza. (more…)

On Thursday, Dana M. Perino, the White House press secretary, said President Bush had urged the Iraqis “not to overreact, because he was not bothered by the incident, although it’s not appropriate for people to throw shoes at a press conference, at any leader.” (more…)

I disagree—the shoe is the least Bush deserves for the nightmare he unleashed in Iraq. He should have been dodging bricks.

Muntader is my brother and I know him very well. He does not apologise,” Udai al-Zaidi said. (more…)

Sounds like a childhood regret…

Den irakiske journalist, der kastede sine sko efter præsident Bush, beder om at blive benådet. (more…)

Le lancer de chaussures du journaliste Mountazer Al-Zaïdi sur George Bush est d’ores et déjà qualifié de “moment historique” sur la blogosphère irakienne. Les vidéos de la séquence, les parodies et les jeux circulent de site en site et des blogueurs qui n’avaient pas posté depuis longtemps se sont remis à l’ouvrage. (more…)

The legislative session became so tumultuous that it prompted the speaker of Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, to announce his resignation, according to The Associated Press. (more…)

The Shoe Heard Round the World

Thousands of Iraqis on Monday demanded the release of Muntazer al-Zaydi, the journalist who threw his shoes at US President George W. Bush. (more…)

Both shoes missed their target – one went high, and the president ducked the other – and Bush did his best to laugh the whole incident off. “I saw his sole,” he joked. But Bush is unlikely to escape the image of a US president cowering behind a lectern watched by an unflinching Maliki. The humiliating scene is already a YouTube hit. (more…)

But the lowly shoe and the Iraqi who threw both of his at President Bush, with widely admired aim, were embraced around the Arab world on Monday as symbols of rage at a still unpopular war. (more…)

Far from a joke, many in the Mideast saw the act by an Iraqi journalist as heroic, expressing the deep, personal contempt many feel for the American leader they blame for years of bloodshed, chaos and the suffering of civilians. (more…)

“This is a farewell kiss, you dog,” he yelled in Arabic. “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.” (more…)

“No one should read anything more into it than what it was, which was an individual throwing a shoe,” Zahren said. (more…)

That’s right. Just a shoe. So it would be silly to think that Iraqis are sick of the nightmarish carnage that continues to devastate their country. That’s just silly. It’s only a shoe.

Greek authorities contacted Israel this weekend with an urgent request for teargas grenades to be used against the wave of riots that broke out in the country last week, Athens police reported on Sunday. (more…)

Police sources say they are running out of teargas after using more than 4,600 capsules in the last week and have urgently contacted Israel and Germany for more stocks. (more…)

International Human Rights Day is observed on 10 December, and it’s time we turned the rhetoric of human rights into reality. Together with the Free Gaza Movement, I am commemorating Human Rights Day this year in Gaza, a tiny strip of land wedged between Israel and Egypt, home to 1.5 million human beings, and subject to an increasingly brutal war being waged against its civilian population by the state of Israel.

We mounted this mission to give our solidarity to the people of Palestine and to highlight the strangulating conditions Israel causes in besieged Gaza. The inhumane effects of this siege threaten to stunt an entire generation — both in terms of physical and mental growth due to malnutrition, terrorization by bomb attacks, incursions and the use of sonic booms — but also in terms of the generation of students who have won places at academic institutions around the world but cannot fulfill them, and those undermined on the ground in Gaza by a lack of food, medicine, electricity, materials and the peace and space to make good use of them in.

The Free Gaza Movement is a grassroots movement of teachers, doctors, activists, union workers and other “ordinary” people who understand that we cannot wait for governments and other international organizations to present us with top-down solutions to the tribulations of the world, solutions which never quite seem to materialize. Since August, the Free Gaza Movement has been sailing ships from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip in acts of nonviolent resistance and civil opposition to the Israeli occupation and siege of Gaza.
(more…)

The relationship between the Greek people and their police force is strained at best. In the 1930s, it was the police who oppressed the labour movement under Fascism and collaborated with the Germans and they were seen as the agents of the military dictatorship that ended with a student uprising in 1974. (more…)

It began with the death of a child, a 15-year-old schoolboy with a chubby face and long brown curls and a black punk-rock T-shirt–an
ordinary teenager trying to be cool. Though he was privately educated in a wealthy Athens suburb, Alexis Grigoropoulos didn’t hang out at the mall. On Saturday night he was downtown in ungentrified Exarcheia, a neighborhood where the indie crowd collects in cafes–leftists and anarchists and music lovers, potheads and addicts and professors, dissenters and the young–and the object in recent years of an intensive cleanup operation. The police account of the events that led to Alexis’s death had the patrol car set upon by a crowd of stone-throwing youths and the boy himself wielding a petrol bomb. But eyewitness reports and videos shot on mobile phones tell a quite different story. Alexis and his friends were out to celebrate a name-day. Some unknown people passed and threw small objects at the car; the officers stopped, walked back to Alexis’s group and began to curse and threaten them. According to one of the boys, Alexis tossed an empty plastic bottle. The officer aimed and fired three shots, two in the air and one that pierced his chest.

Since then, the country has gone up in flames. There’s scarcely a town or city that hasn’t seen angry protests, many organized spontaneously by the very young. Four days after the killing of Alexis, Athens is still a war zone, with broken glass and upturned cars and flaming buildings everywhere; the New Democracy government, clinging to a one-seat majority, is utterly at a loss. Scandals, indifference and incompetence robbed it long ago of any moral authority; to declare a state of emergency would exacerbate the violence and bring dark echoes of the military dictatorship that fell in 1974, the last time Greece’s cities witnessed scenes like these.
(more…)

The Israeli peace camp was born in sin and died because of a lie: It was born as the legitimate son of the sin of occupation, and died the illegitimate son of the lie that “there is no partner” with whom to negotiate on the other side. Between September 1967 and October 2000, it spent 33 years waging the brave and determined struggle of a minority against a majority, “traitors” against “patriots,” “defilers of Israel” against “lovers of Israel,” David against Goliath. Today, we must painfully admit that it was struggle that did not produce much.

The peace camp was born of a small ad – a statement bearing only a dozen mostly unknown signatures – addressed to the general public, and then began to die a pathetic death, which is lamented by no one. Since then, its body has laid in public squares that are void of protesters, in streets empty of struggle and in public discourse free of ideas. On occasion, it lets out a desperate and dying gasp from the direction of a group of determined but marginalized groups, near the separation fence in Na’alin or in Gush Shalom’s advertisements in the Friday paper.

On occasion, it wraps itself in the guise of a mass demonstration, mostly at deceptive memorial rallies for Yitzhak Rabin – also featuring pop stars Aviv Geffen and Ninet – and in public opinion polls in which the majority claims to adopt its positions. But the interim balance sheet of history is clear and razor sharp: The occupation, the settlements, the police thugs and the brutality have been victorious over everything else. Never have so many people said we need to put a stop to things, and never have so few done anything about it. (more…)

It has come as a surprise to many of my friends to hear that I have decided not to vote. Some people have sent me messages begging me to cast a vote, some of them aggressive and condescending, others desperate… so I will try to clarify my views to those among you who consider voting to be an important aspect of democratic participation.

Above all, I am convinced that no political action is worth undertaking without the possibility of the action bringing about a desired change—or even the possibility of placing us on a path towards this change. So while I believe that voting is indeed an important aspect of civic awareness, I believe it is a useful practice only once certain democratic institutions are in place to make it worth our while. In this particular case at this particular time, I don’t believe voting is my best option for a number of reasons—so why should I participate just because I am eligible?

I would not go to a political demonstration if I believed the particular manifestation of protest would be ineffective, just as I would not express my political views to a dog. There is simply no point in these acts.

Likewise, when the choice lies between parties that have monopolized the “debates” by excluding third-party candidates, that have transformed a theoretically multiparty political system into de facto two-party farce, that have pushed candidates who both essentially agree that military aggression is a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy, that profess their immutable support for Israel’s right to kill Palestinian civilians, that quibble over the deaths of American soldiers while basically agreeing that the carnal nightmare in Iraq should continue, that actually threaten to widen American offensives, and agree on much else… the word “choice” defies its very meaning. Until it reclaims its meaning, voting is at best a waste of my time and at worst a capitulation to the corrupt and decidedly undemocratic state of the American political structure. (more…)

Israelis have no moral right to fight the Chinese occupation of Tibet. The president of the Israeli Friends of the Tibetan People, the psychologist Nahi Alon, who was involved in the murder of two Palestinians in Gaza in 1967 – as was revealed in Haaretz Magazine last weekend – chose to make his private “atonement” by fighting to free Tibet, of all places. He is not alone among Israelis calling to stop the occupation – but not ours. No small number of other good Israelis have recently joined the wave of global protest that broke out over the Olympics, set to take place in Beijing this summer. It is easy; it engenders no controversy – who would not be in favor of liberating Tibet? But that is not the fight that Israeli human rights supporters should be waging.

To fight for Tibet, Israel needs no courage, because there is no price to pay. On the contrary, this is part of a fashionable global trend, almost as much as the fight against global warming or the poaching of sea lions.

These fights are just, and must be undertaken. But in Israel they are deluxe fights, which are unthinkable. When one comes to the fight with hands that are collectively, and sometimes individually, so unclean, it is impossible to protest a Chinese occupation. Citizens of a country that maintains a military subjugation in its backyard that is no less cruel than that of the Chinese, and by some parameters even more so, and against which there is practically no more protest here, have no justification in denouncing another occupation. (more…)

Today marks the anniversary of the Nazi German invasion and subsequent occupation of Denmark in 1940—the so-called Operation Weserübung. Early that morning 68 years ago, German warships entered Copenhagen harbor in violation of a German-Danish non-aggression treaty signed the prior year. The Danish military was in no condition to pose a serious obstacle to German forces; Copenhagen was taken in a matter of hours and by dawn, Denmark had capitulated. Only 39 Danish soldiers were killed in the short battle.

Of course, Denmark was not strategically crucial to Hitler’s plans and was only occupied “on the way” to Norway, where the Nazis secured critical iron-ore reserves. By all accounts, Hitler intended the occupation in Denmark to be a “model protectorate” in Europe and because Danes were “fellow Nordic Aryans”, they could be trusted to handle their own domestic affairs. For this and a number of other reasons, the Nazis were inclined to be lenient with Denmark. Besides, the official reason for the occupation provided by Germany was to safeguard Denmark from a potential British invasion… But the Danes had other plans. (more…)

AMY GOODMAN: [Five years ago] on March 19th, 2003, the US began bombing Baghdad. The invasion was on. Six weeks later, President Bush stood under a banner reading “Mission Accomplished” and declared an end to major military combat operations in Iraq. Now, half a decade later, the war continues with no end in sight.

In a speech today to mark the fifth anniversary, the President, who leaves office in less than eleven months, will again give an upbeat assessment of the war. According to released excerpts of his address, Bush will insist the so-called troop surge in Iraq has opened the door to a “major strategic victory in the broader war on terror.”

But by most accounts, the war has been an unmitigated disaster. Up to one million Iraqis have been killed, with no estimates on the number of those wounded. Up to 2.5 million people are estimated to be displaced inside Iraq, and more than two million have fled to neighboring countries. Meanwhile, nearly 4,000 US soldiers have been killed and tens of thousands more wounded. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz estimates the overall cost of this war will be $3 trillion. (more…)

AMY GOODMAN: [Tonight] the US invasion and occupation of Iraq will enter its sixth year. On Monday, at least seventy-two Iraqis were killed in violence around Iraq, including forty-two Shiite worshippers in a suicide bombing in Karbala. Two US troops were also killed, bringing the US death toll to 3,990, ten deaths away from the 4,000 mark.

If the Bush administration’s drive to invade Iraq was aided by corporate media cheerleading, the five-year mark today is being met with near-silence by the corporate media. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the US occupation of Iraq has accounted for just three percent of news stories in television, print and online media so far this year. On cable news networks, it’s accounted for just one percent.

That silence was on display this past weekend when the corporate media largely ignored a monumental gathering just outside the nation’s capital. For four days, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and active-duty soldiers convened at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland for Winter Soldier, an eyewitness indictment of atrocities committed by US troops during the ongoing occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, the event was modeled after the historic 1971 Winter Soldier hearings that took place in Detroit held during the Vietnam War. (more…)

AMY GOODMAN: Iraq and Afghanistan veterans gathered in Maryland this past weekend to testify at Winter Soldier, an eyewitness indictment of atrocities committed by US troops during the ongoing occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, the event was modeled after the historic 1971 Winter Soldier hearings held during the Vietnam War.

Over the weekend, war veterans spoke of free-fire zones, the shootings and beatings of innocent civilians, racism at the highest levels of the military, sexual harassment and assault within the military, and the torturing of prisoners.

Although Winter Soldier was held just outside the nation’s capital, it was almost entirely ignored by the American corporate media. A search on the Lexis database found that no major television network or cable news network even mentioned Winter Soldier over the weekend, neither did the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times or most other major newspapers in the country. The editors of the Washington Post chose to cover Winter Soldier but placed the article in the local section. (more…)

Israel issued a warning to Hamas on Sunday that the organization would be responsible for any injuries or deaths resulting from a mass demonstration against the blockade of Gaza held yesterday.

If necessary, IDF artillery will fire warning shots at open areas, and should the protestors continue their advance, troops will employ riot dispersal methods.

As a last resort, snipers will open fire at protestors legs. The orders were approved by senior General Staff officers as well as Defense Minister Ehud Barak. <<< more

Of course, it is ridiculous to claim that Hamas would be responsible for the killing of innocent civilians authorized by the Israeli military, but the logic of the blockade encourages these inanities. We are also meant to accept that Hamas is actually responsible for the international economic boycott on Gaza as well as for the severe shortage of food products and power resources. (more…)

I was so eager to read the memoirs of this great Marxist historian that I could not wait to read it. Finished it on the plane last night. What a big disappointment. You can be a great historian and write a lousy memoirs. You don’t even learn much about who he is from reading it. You learn some about the times but I would rather read his The Age of Extremes (a history of the 20th century). Now that is a fine piece of work.

I think that the problems with this memoirs is this: to write a good memoirs 1) you need to think that you are somewhat interesting; 2) you need to be a good story teller; 3) you need to be comfortable talking about yourself. That does not apply here. (more…)

The inanity of authoritarian movements can never be underestimated. The horrific shooting by Hamas of unarmed demonstrators is only the latest example of the Islamist group’s unwillingness or inability to control its forces in the Gaza Strip.

Squandering the general support they enjoyed here by forcibly seizing control of the Strip last June, many Gazans now regard Hamas as an unhinged group of fanatics more concerned with rooting out political opposition than in combating the Israeli occupation. (more…)

As I write this, thousands of pro-Fatah demonstrators are pouring through the streets of Gaza City, collecting at al-Anzar park near Islamic University to commemorate the third anniversary of Yassir Arafat’s death. Already, Hamas thugs have killed one and injured dozens of demonstrators. Because these events are literally occurring just blocks away from my flat, I’ll probably remain at my downtown office until things calm down. This is quite bad. All I can hear is shouting, sirens and heavy gunfire…

UPDATE: Seven have now been killed.

Tags: Violence, Gaza, Palestine, Clashes, Security, Fatah, Hamas, Gunfire, Al-Anzar, Islamic University, Yassir Arafat, Gaza City